The RTW Advantage Continues in April

Another month, another victory for job creation in right-to-work (RTW) states.

The Rio Grande Foundation is tracking announcements of expansions, relocations, and greenfield investments published on Area Development’s website. Founded in 1965, the publication “is considered the leading executive magazine covering corporate site selection and relocation. … Area Development is published quarterly and has 60,000 mailed copies.” In an explanation to the Foundation, its editor wrote that items for Area Development’s announcements listing are “culled from RSS feeds and press releases that are emailed to us from various sources, including economic development organizations, PR agencies, businesses, etc. We usually highlight ones that represent large numbers of new jobs and/or investment in industrial projects.”

April had a somewhat surprising result — non-RTW states posted their best performance of the year, and nabbed 29.4 percent of projected job creation:

As has been the case since January 1, in April, Kentucky claimed a disproportionate share of non-RTW employment. But it should be noted that the Bluegrass State is moving in a RTW direction — compulsory unionism may be repealed at the state level, and a dozen counties have passed RTW ordinances.

April saw a number of non-RTW-to-RTW shifts, including Adecco Group North America moving its headquarters from New York to Florida, California-based Kaiser Permanente establishing an IT campus in Georgia, and T&B Tube Company relocating an Illinois facility to Indiana.

Nationally, the total number of jobs projected so far this year is 59,455 — with 81.2 percent slated for RTW states.

How long will it take for New Mexico’s elected officials to recognize that RTW is a powerful economic-development tool?

Methodological specifics:

* All job estimates — “up to,” “as many as,” “about” — were taken at face value, for RTW and non-RTW states alike.

* If an announcement did not make an employment projection, efforts were made to obtain an estimate from newspaper articles and/or press releases by elected officials and economic-development bureaucracies.

* If no job figure could be found anywhere, the project was not counted, whether it was a RTW or non-RTW state.

* Intrastate relocations were not counted, interstate relocations were.